08/07/2011

At last week's digital scholarship debate Rory McGreal raised a point that has often nagged at me. He said he didn't want blogs and other forms of outputs to be recognised, not because they weren't part of scholarly activity, but because he didn't want them to go the same way as journal articles. There is something in this - we have refined and controlled the writing process to such a degree that it is not a very pleasurable activity. Sometimes writing a good paper does feel as though you are doing something creative and worthwhile, but often there is an element of duty about it ("I need to get my publications up for the REF"), and the objective, scientific style itself is very tightly defined.

The other forms of output we now have allow all sorts of variety - in terms of tone, content, format, size, audience, etc. It's a fun thing to do, and as these forms of output aren't recognised, it is generally something people do for the fulfillment of being creative, expressing an idea and engaging with an audience.

Now, if, as I keep banging on, we were to start recognising these non-traditional outputs, then it's not inconceivable that they'd go the way of publications. For example, only blog posts in recognised blogging sites would count, or they'd need to demonstrate the appropriate objectivity of researchers. One can imagine in five years time some new career researcher banging out posts that don't differ much from each other in order to get their technorati ranking over the required threshold.

There are some inbuilt protection mechanisms against this however. For example, the removal of the filter means that imposing the quality threshold is unlikely, because people can always go elsewhere and reputation arises from the community.

It does strike me though that there is a bit of a dilemma in all this promotion of digital scholarship. It's rather akin to the person who finds a beautiful unspoilt holiday destination and wants to rave about it, only to find that it then becomes popular, commercialised and loses its original charm.

Yes, we're all playing with Google+, and I suspect blogging reactions to it, but this is not one of those posts (quick verdict: it's immediately better than Buzz/Wave, and Circles combined with Hangout could be very useful for research teams, institutions). No, what this post is about is the categorisation dilemmas that tools such as Google+ generate, and our relationship with technology.

In terms of categorisation my first dilemma was whether work colleagues count as 'friends'. I chatted to George Siemens about this and he concluded he didn't have friends, just colleagues (or colleagues who are also friends). I'm in a similar position, or at least my online self is. I do have some friends (some of whom are not imaginary), but they tend not to be the sort of people who'll be in Google+. And there are plenty of people I work with who I would also count as friends (such as George). And then there are people who I've never even met who I think of as friends (Jim Groom and Alan Levine for example). But friends is a very laden term, so do I want to recreate the Facebook definition, or reclaim it for 'special' people? Dunno.

And on this subject of this I am unsure which approach to take to adding people into Google+. When I started in Facebook I befriended anyone, but after a while I stripped this back to people I knew reasonably well. In Twitter I have a more open approach, although once I was following about 1000 people I stopped following back automatically. So do I want the wide or narrow network in Google+. Dunno yet.

Lastly, looking at Google+ brought to mind a post I did a few years ago, in which I argued that we are largely irrational in our choice of software, but often dress this up in terms of rational decision making around features. We have an emotional connection to software and tend to be loyal to one type. We are essentially monoamorous for categories of software, you're either a Facebook or Twitter person, a Blackboard or Moodle advocate, Flickr or Picassa freak, etc (you may have accounts in both, but you're loyalty will be with one or the other). As I argued then, it's like the team you support (in football or whatever) - the whole point of the attachment is to have only one (although it is acceptable to have more than one loyalty at different levels eg local team, main team, national team).

If you are launching a new software service then this monoamorous behaviour is significant - either the service needs to be better enough to lure people away or it has to be distinctive enough to constitute a different category. You can't rely on people wanting more than one service that does the same thing.

Which brings me back to Google+, sooner or later those of us who use these things intensively will have to go with one or the other. There will be cross-streaming so you can feed one from the other, but our attention and loyalty will be with one or the other. And in these kinds of businesses, it's attention that counts.

Which leaves me with the big question - which one will win my affections? Definitely dunno.

My argument was that there are a number of converging pressures which will make recognition inevitable. These were:

1) Impact

2) Efficiency

3) Efficacy

4) Complementarity

5) Institutional benefit

6) Variety

7) Human factors

Antonio Figueiredo put the opposing motion, and Paulo Simoescaptured it in everyone's (well AJ Cann's anyway) new favourite tool, ScoopIt. We ended up kind of agreeing that it would happen, but Antonio suggested it would take longer than ten years. He pulled a nice trick here inviting the audience to close their eyes and picture their university ten years ago, 'was it really so different?' he asked. He must have struck a chord with this as the no vote won the day.

Chatting to people afterwards the sentiment seemed to be that they thought it would happen, and indeed, should happen, but they were generally pessimistic about the ability of universities to change to accommodate it. I've got to say I find this kind of depressing if it turns out to be true. I'd have preferred it to be rejected because people felt it abandoned core scholarly principles or something. But to think that despite us all thinking it's a good idea, an entire decade is still not long enough to bring about a modest change in university recognition processes? If true, one wonders how displaced from society unis will look in ten years' time.